Posts Tagged With: Calliou

Because that’s just the way the universe works, it turns out that our first installment of the yucks was just the qualifying round. This past weekend we had the gold medal event finals, and I’m proud to say that each member of the family took home gold at one point or another.

Daddy took gold for sounding the sickest – the upstairs bathroom would apparently make a great sound stage, the reverb was AMAZING!

Mommy took gold for most pathetic when sick – I spent my entire Saturday on the floor of the den since it was just mere feet from the downstairs bathroom.

Soapfi took gold in two categories – most volume in proportion to body size (she covered acres!!) and best attitude during the whole ordeal.

Soapfi was sick first, recovered first, and then was amazingly patient and caring while Mommy & Daddy were pathetic lumps all weekend. She brought us so many stuffed animals, patted our shoulders, brought fake water, real water, blankets….. of course it probably didn’t hurt that Calliou & the Wiggles were on constant repeat on the DVD player. We were were both so sick, the TV was probably the only functioning “parent” in the house!

Far too much apparently. We’re pretty much over the yucks, but now we have Olympic Fever, so I’m still kind of lacking in the whole motivation to blog department, but this happened last night so I figured I would share.

Soapfi is in the midst of another round of “I can do it”, this time with the added caveat of “all myself”. So it has generated many a frustrating moment for her. Last night she was attempting to put the plastic shoes back on her Calliou doll and was having a rough go of it – they aren’t super hard plastic, but they are still a pain in the azz even for Mommy & Daddy to get on and off his feet, which are the size of the great white north.

After about 90 seconds of frustration she hurls the shoes and the doll across the room, mutters FUDGE (only just like in The Christmas Story she didn’t really say fudge, but instead let slip the mother of all swear words), and buries her head in the carpet and begins to cry.

Of course I’m one of those uncouth parents caught between laughing hysterically because at 2.25 years old she is already only swearing at situationally appropriate times, and with a great deal of panache, being mortified because she might do this in public and it will reflect badly on me & Daddy, and then being indignant that people get so riled up about words they have made taboo because sometimes you just need a good bout of swearing to let it all out.

In the end we let it go without comment, dealt with the frustration and the shoes, and are desperately trying to watch our own potty mouths.

Eight down, still three to go (for now). I’m in full out Robot Hat making mode! Toddler size, adult size, heck I even knitted a newborn sized one – I was worried it would be too small since it fit Soapfi’s Calliou doll so well, but the people who bought it loved it, so yeah me!

Overhauled my listings to make it easier for people to choose the size they want – apparently I had way to much faith in people following the directions and I need to force them to tell me how big to make their hat. I had originally just done the one listing to save on the listing fee, but the extra buck twenty to put up six extra listings will pay for itself 10 times over in not having to worry that people who are ignoring my (MULTIPLE) emails about what size they need will give me crappy feedback for taking too long to make and ship their hats! (Again with me and my first world problems!)

Looking forward to the weekend – Soapfi & I will be helping Gramma with her garage sale, then we’re going up to the Skagit Speedway for “Rolling Thunder Big Rigs, Sportsman Sprint Showdown And Outlaw Hornets“. It will be interesting to see if Soapfi gets into it or finds it too loud and scary. If nothing else we’ll probably manage to at least get a picture of her in big azz headphone/earmuff/hearing protector “thingies”!

Lets face it, as much as we like to think otherwise, there is some indoctrination going on with our kids. Sure, we all spout how we want them to be independent little thinkers, taking on the world on their own terms, being their own person, bladdity, blah, blah, blah. But the reality is, there is a strong desire for them to like what we like, do what we do, and think like we think.

For us it’s mostly because we envision doing all kinds of fun stuff with Soapfi, but for right now our definition of “fun” is things *WE* like – golf, ice hockey, reading, crochet, knitting, and going to watch the AquaSox play baseball. As she gets older and asserts her opinions and ideas more, I will probably come to love gymnastics, horses, and tae kwon do or whatever else she decides to become passionate about (if it happened with Calliou, it can happen with anything!), but right now I could care less about them.

I’ll admit it, we’re trying to influence what she likes by exposing her over and over to what we like. And teaching her a few important phrases along the way:

Every day Soapfi’s imagination grows. Sometimes she’s a bird, running around in circles flapping her arms, other times she is apparently channeling Stevie Wonder and closes her eyes and sways her head back and forth to a tune only she can hear.

She loves to “mix” things at her play kitchen, and I’ve had so much imaginary water and juice this past week I really am surprised my kidney stone didn’t just give up and pass all on it’s own!

She adores her play kitchen, however I don’t always want to know what she’s cooking. If she offers you soup, I would suggest you politely decline!

Currently Soapfi doesn’t have any siblings, and no plans are in the works for there to be one in the future either. Considering Soapfi’s demonstration of her concept of sibling love the other day, our current lack of plans are probably for the best.

Soapfi was playing with the Calliou figures she had received on her birthday. Doing all kinds of nonsense things (well I hope they were nonsense, or we have even bigger problems than her idea of sibling love!) like putting them in a pot and cooking them on her new play kitchen. Or lining them up on the table and then knocking them off with her golf club.

At one point she was taking them two at a time and having them “kiss” – go ahead, this is the “awww, how cute” moment and it doesn’t last long! Calliou & Emma, Clementine & Leo, Emma & Rosie, Leo & Calliou it was a non-judgmental kiss-fest….. until it came to Rosie & Calliou. (For those not familiar with the show, Rosie is Calliou’s little sister, all the other characters mentioned are just friends.) When it came time for them to kiss, she smashed their heads together like they were protons at the Large Hadron Collider. I was waiting for quarks and bosons to go flying around the room, at a mere two years of age she would finally be the one to discover antimatter.

This did not happen once, it happened at least four times! Unfortunately the Sarlacc Pit has once again devoured the video camera, so the pictures do not adequately display the enthusiasm involved in the “kissing”. I even offered her an out, “Oh no, they bumped heads, ouch”. I received an exasperated “No Mommy. Kissing.” A few more head smashes for Rosie & Calliou before moving on to other characters and nice gentle smootches.

So far she has shown no indication of trying to smash her skull into ours during good night kisses, so my state of mind is hovering more around perplexed, as opposed to alarmed, in relation to her concept of sibling love.

Considering the our ineptitude as parents, I’m not sure how we managed to get Soapfi through her first two years mostly unscathed. Some of our friends probably lost money on a secret baby injury pool that must exist somewhere! We celebrated by having a party at Kids ‘N Clay. It was a win for everybody, the kids had fun painting their choice of ceramics, we didn’t have to clean up (the house before hand or the mess after!), and we have a commemorative plate with Soapfi’s hand print as well as thumb prints from all the kidlet guests.

Soapfi still takes awhile to warm up to large groups even when she knows everybody, but she was having fun by the end. She was a little perplexed by the whole concept of blowing out the candle, so daddy ended up having to assist.

Our friends were extremely generous with their gifts – beautiful spring outfits we desperately needed, fun Calliou toys that were naturally a hit, and even a play kitchen! Of course, in the end her favorite thing was the cardboard box that play kitchen came in!

The almighty “everyone” is always saying that people have shorter and shorter attention spans. “Everyone” is probably referring to me, and has not met my child. It was another weekend where poor daddy had to work lots of overtime, and I was left to my own devices to keep the kidlet entertained.

We ended up going to the park both Saturday and Sunday just so we (okay *ME*) didn’t go stir crazy in the house. Soapfi would have been perfectly content to repeatedly watch 90 minute stretches of Calliou videos, with barely a snack break between hitting replay, for the entire day – but even my lazy “bad parent” side refused to indulge in that monumental of a parenting fail. So we braved the wind and the cold, bundled up in puffy purple coat loveliness and went to the park.

Soapfi loves the park – especially the opportunity to run away from me (I am currently editing together a “backside montage” because 90% of my video from the weekend was of her backside as she ran away). We “played” chase for a good 40 minutes that first day, it only stopped when she became enamored with watching the older kids have baseball practice. It then took me a good 10 minutes to pry her away from that, perhaps this means we’ll have better luck taking her to AquaSox games this spring! The entire ride home was peppered with exclamations of “baseball”.

That evening we played “I like your….” for what seemed like *forever* to me, but was probably only about 15 minutes. It’s one of those things that is fun to start, but then goes on far too long for your adult attention span, or you run out of things to like. (For those who are not acquainted with the intricacies of the game, it goes like this… You say to Soapfi “I like your eyes” and she will reply “I like your eyes too” and then she picks something she likes and it’s your turn to reply. This goes on and on as you take turns choosing a different body part or quality (smile, laugh, cheeks, fingers, teeth, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, ad infinitum since repeats are not only allowed, but encouraged to show you really really like something!))

Sunday we went and supported friends who were selling Girl Scout Cookies (nom nom nom nom!!!) and went to a park we’d never visited before. This park had swings, little Soapfi’s head just about exploded with “OMG SWINGS!!!!!!” After a good 25 minutes of “more swing, more swing, more swing” I was forced to bodily remove her against her will, as her little hands were turning blue along with her lips. She was appropriately dressed for the most part, but she refuses to wear “hand hats” (Soapfi speak for mittens), and it was extremely cold and windy out. That lead to a tantrum the entire way home, that was due more to stubbornness than attention span!

That evening we had a rousing game of Monster and Open/Close that, once again seemed to last forever. (This game involves Soapfi sitting in her plastic Little Tykes car and opening/closing the door as Mommy/Daddy enthusiastically (well for the first 30 times) shout “OPEN” or “CLOSED” depending on the status of the door. This can also be modified to “Up/Down” for jumping games or “On/Off” for playing with light switches.)

A few months ago we began the tried and true “Let me kiss it, and make it better” for all those minor bumps and scratches that, when left unchecked, devolve into a complete and total meltdown even when no blood or visible mark is anywhere to be found.

Apparently our kisses have been insufficient, last night she bumped her chin and this happened:

So now we have regular kisses and the more super strength “Doctor Kisses”. Of course it was really the binky that ultimately made it all better!

And I’m still trying to figure out where she learned that physical injury equated with asking for the doctor. Sure, she has been to the doctor for checkups, earaches, and the cold of all colds that turned into “Pertussis Watch 2012”. But we’ve never reacted to any of her routine falls, bumps, spills, jumps off the couch with bad landings, or scrapes with statements about needing to go see the doctor. If I had to bet, I’d say it was something she saw on Calliou!

P.S. I’m well aware I went overboard with making it a “movie” but I like goofy crap like that, and since our cheap azz video camera doesn’t time stamp the files themselves properly (we have a super special camera that can shoot video an entire MONTH into the future!) I like having the “credits” to document that stuff – cause Lord knows notes about the videos aren’t making it into her baby book!

Sometimes I forget that Soapfi isn’t even 2 yet. She soaks up everything like a sponge, and what is even more astonishing to me is how much she retains and then applies it appropriately at a later date.

My favorite example, even though it involves her probably watching way to much TV for her age, is the “Eh, Mickey” (how it sounds when she tries to do the pirate “Argghh, Matey”) that she picked up from Calliou. Calliou gets a pirate book from the library, he and his dad say “Argghh, Matey” back and forth a few times in the episode in relation to pirates being pictured on screen. Last week we realized she was retaining what she was seeing and applying it to other things far better than we imagined.

We were at Toys ‘R Us letting her try out tricycles and bike helmets in anticipation of buying them for her birthday. Conclusion: “No Like It”, so she will be getting Gator Golf and a cash register she was completely enamored with.

We were walking down the isle with all those Playmobil sets when she starts growling “Eh, Mickey”, sure enough – we were walking by the Pirates. Holy crap, Mommy’s mind is now officially blown away – kidlet recognizes chunky plastic men are pirates, kidlet connects chunky plastic pirates to cartoon pirates from TV, kidlet remembers what cartoon pirates are supposed to say and shares it with us.

So now that we realize how much she is actually remembering, are we starting to unintentionally overload her with information?

We were playing some Monster and TRAIN, as well as participating in the much beloved “Run around in circles and fall down” dance with the hockey game on in the background. At some point an ad came on with a band featuring a closeup of the trombone player. Soapfi started shouting (when she is in identification mode, it is *always* a shout and usually repeated in triplicate) “trumpet, trumpet, trumpet”, at which point Daddy points out that it is actually a trombone. “Oh, tombone”.

Then Daddy wonders aloud “Does she really need to know the nuances of brass instruments at her age?”

Does she? Shouldn’t we just be happy she was at least in the same section of the orchestra and didn’t think it was a woodwind??